Shooter's Bible Guide to Handloading: A Comprehensive Reference for Responsible and Reliable Reloading

By Wayne Van Zwoll

A thorough resource on handloading at home, Shooter’s Bible Guide to Handloading provides detailed information about the history of handloading and key figures’ innovations, a simple explanation of hand reloading, selecting the basic tools needed, and choosing your cases, dies, primers, and powders as well as step-by-step instructions for reloading firearm cartridges and how to test your loads at the range. The text is supplemented by more than one hundred detailed photographs that illustrate the various types of reloading equipment available and provide guidance in performing the actions that result in a handloaded cartridge.

The Shooter’s Bible Guide to Handloading covers interesting engineering questions the handloader may consider, including bullet integrity, copper bullets, and energy versus killing power.
Other topics covered include:
Handloading the old-fashioned way
Casting your own bullets
The influence of barrel length
Economics of home reloading
And much more!

Pick up a copy of the Shooter’s Bible Guide to Handloading to learn everything you need to know about reloading by hand at home.

Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for hunters and firearms enthusiasts. We publish books about shotguns, rifles, handguns, target shooting, gun collecting, self-defense, archery, ammunition, knives, gunsmithing, gun repair, and wilderness survival. We publish books on deer hunting, big game hunting, small game hunting, wing shooting, turkey hunting, deer stands, duck blinds, bowhunting, wing shooting, hunting dogs, and more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Release date: Nov 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781634509718

Book preview

Cover Page of Shooter’s Bible Guide to HandloadingHalf Title of Shooter’s Bible Guide to HandloadingTitle Page of Shooter’s Bible Guide to Handloading

Copyright © 2015 by Wayne van Zwoll

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Print ISBN: 978-1-63220-287-1

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63450-971-8

Printed in China

CONTENTS

AUTHOR’S NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION: HANDLOADING

CHAPTER 1: PIONEERS IN HANDLOADING

CHAPTER 2: HANDLOADING, SIMPLY

CHAPTER 3: HANDLOADING TOOLS

CHAPTER 4: HEADSPACE IS NOT IQ!

CHAPTER 5: PRESSURE

CHAPTER 6: GIDDY-UP!

CHAPTER 7: TESTING HANDLOADS

CHAPTER 8: BORN IN THE BARRACKS

CHAPTER 9: WILDCATS

CHAPTER 10: FAST-STEPPERS GONE FACTORY

CHAPTER 11: THE SHIFT TO SHORT

CHAPTER 12: HANDLOADING THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY

CHAPTER 13: COLONIAL LOADS

CHAPTER 14: MORE ON BULLETS

CHAPTER 15: BULLETS FOR BIG GAME

SHOOTING SECTION

CHAPTER 16: HOW TO HEAR WHEN YOU’RE OLD

CHAPTER 17: SOFTER SHOOTING ISN’T FOR SISSIES

CHAPTER 18: SHOOTING WELL IN WIND

APPENDIX 1: HANDLOADS FROM WAYNE’S BENCH

APPENDIX 2: PRODUCT DIRECTORY FOR HANDLOADERS

APPENDIX 3: HELPS FOR HANDLOADERS

AUTHOR’S NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Producing this book kept me from having fun for many, many months. If the effort justified such deprivation, it should be apparent. You should find this book both entertaining and useful, and find that it cuts across the brands to which all handloading manuals are slaves. You should find here the best techniques, tools, and components, from a sweep of industry sources. You’ll revisit handloading pioneers now gone and look over the shoulders of ballisticians who run sophisticated laboratories that yield current data. The text owes much to veteran hunters and competitive marksmen—and women—who routinely put several bullets through one hole in paper. You should come away, too, with ideas for better ammunition to ring steel targets bent by mirage in a distant zip code.

If the words and photos fail to deliver, it’s my fault. To the extent they make this book a good buy and, eventually, one of the most-consulted tomes in your library, it’s because many people contributed. I can’t name them all, so I won’t bore you with a list. Some are identified in the text, but countless others have taught me much about handloading and shooting. This is indeed an industry rich in both history and talent—and full of selfless souls willing to share their expertise. I thank them all most sincerely.

Of course, I’m indebted to Earl Wickman, who gave generously of his coaching when, pretzeled over the iron aperture of a Remington 40x, I made every youthful blunder possible in my halting progress toward competence behind a trigger. And I owe Alice, who warned me repeatedly that writing this book would make me surly, unreasonable and fat. She was right.

—Wayne van Zwoll

INTRODUCTION: HANDLOADING

Handloading saves you money. I wondered about that four decades ago, my fist tight around the $15 demanded by Herters for its iron C press. Heavy enough to anchor a light destroyer, it crowded the counter of the 28-foot mobile home I occupied during graduate school. A 50-pound keg of surplus H4831 came my way for $150. With barely enough cash left for primers, bullets, tomato soup, and the month’s rent, I plunged into handloading. In my .270, a reworked Mauser, a 130-grain Sierra pushed by 59 grains sent mule deer to the Great Beyond. I shot my first elk with a 180-grain Speer over 69 grains in a .300 H&H, another rebarreled 98.

Whether you handload for rifles, handguns or shotguns, you get real value for your efforts. While many concepts and practices transfer from metallic cartridges to shotshells, this book treats rifle (mainly) and pistol loads.

BEYOND ECONOMICS

Handloading wrings potential from cartridges neglected or hamstrung by factories with an eye to profits and litigation. My recipe for 87-grain Sierras in the .250 Savage produces half-minute groups—three times the precision of commercial loads. IMR 7828 powers Noslers from my .264 Winchester 300 fps faster than chart speed. Handloading the .45 Colt—factory-loaded to squib speeds for the gaggle of old and cheap revolvers so chambered—gives it muscle in stout handguns like those by Freedom Arms.

Want more reasons to handload? It’s fun. It’s a personal investment that hikes the satisfaction you get from each shot. And it pulls you away from the television screen, where people who know nothing about ammunition march in lockstep with the equally ignorant on crusades to disarm you. Handloading calms you, reminds you that the Second Amendment still matters to the legions of fellow enthusiasts who built your press, machined your dies, punched the flash-holes in those cases, and turned the cannelures on your bullets—and to many millions more who share your passion for shooting, collecting and studying the history and mechanics of firearms. Handloading imbeds you ever more deeply in this clan (women included!), while distinguishing you from the great unwashed who simply pull triggers on commercial ammunition.

The author has long handloaded the 7x57. He killed this Oregon buck in the 1970s with a 145-grain Speer.

In my 40 years at the bench, the growing market power of handloaders has produced a cornucopia of hardware and components. The last couple of decades alone have yielded hundreds more bullets and powders in cartridges only the clairvoyant among wildcatters might have imagined in my youth.

Now, cursed be the scalawag who dismisses the factory load as fodder for infidels. I shoot a lot of it. And over my shooting career, it’s been much improved. Bullet velocities once viable only with primer-flattening handloads now grace shop shelves. Bullet types range from the varmint-vaporizing to cohesive champs that drive laser-straight through the muscle and bone of creatures the size of chest freezers, with enough leftover romp to sever an oak limb and lace a Peterbuilt engine block.

Handloading requires your time and a bit of study. You have the time—the regulation 24 hours everyone gets each day. Study is simply an extension of passion. You are a shooter, aren’t you?

Like racing motorcycles, skydiving and snorkeling with sharks, handloading is not as dangergous as it might appear to the uninitiated. But because handloading puts you close to things that could impair or abbreviate your life, you’re smart to mind these caveats:

YES, YOU CAN TRY THIS AT HOME. BUT …

Handload only if you can honestly claim a reasonable level of intelligence, proof of which is your willingness to read all caveats twice, take them to heart, and admit in all humility that, no matter how long you’ve been shooting or how many times you’ve pumped a press handle, you do not know all there is to know about handloading. And won’t. Ever.

At the bench, focus on the job, not the clock. Hurry-up handloading results in sloppy work and substandard ammunition. It can cause mistakes that ruin costly rifles and leave you thoroughly bandaged when you’d as soon look unblemished. Store components only in original containers. No, you will not remember you put 4198 in that empty 4831 canister. You will not tell at a glance the difference between 140-grain .270 spitzers and the 140 7mms you dumped in the .270 box. Mix-ups are embarrassing at best; they can be lethal.

Keep an organized bench. Working up starter loads for a new cartridge, you’ll likely charge only a few cases between changes in powder type. Permit just one canister on the bench at a time. Finishing with that propellant, dump all remaining powder from the measure (or, if you adopt my habits, the plastic pepper shaker) into the original canister. Close it. Put it away. Ditto the bullets.

If a cartridge won’t chamber easily, extract it and check the bullet for rifling marks, the hull for overall length. A bullet seated into the rifling, or a case mouth jammed up against the chamber mouth so tight it bites into the bullet can bump pressures to uncomfortable levels. A snug fit at shoulder or rim (a condition of minimum headspace) isn’t dangerous. But before you lean on that bolt handle to close it, figure out what’s tight.

Keep your loading room secure. Priming compound is an explosive. Smokeless powder is a fuel that burns so fast most people think it explodes. Both are best kept from the hands of young innocents and dull adults. Of course, you’ll not allow an ignition source in that room. Electric heaters and wood stoves can be as hazardous as cigarettes.

Label all loads prominently, with age-resistant ink, on ammo boxes. Working up loads three at a time (as I often do to start) consider marking each cartridge on primer or case head with a grease pencil or Magic Marker. Color-code them, and record the code in a notebook.

Discard cases showing incipient separation—typically a white line just in front of the extractor groove, where the web gets thin enough to allow brass to flow forward upon firing. You’ll get stretch here with each shot, more with belted cases in generous chambers. Firing work-hardens brass. Brittle brass wants to break. When it does, escaping gas can wreck your rifle and your looks. Annealing brass restores its ductility. Still, it’s poor economy to use tired brass or hulls stretched too far or repeatedly.

When testing handloads, wear glasses as well as ear protection. I forego both when hunting, and would rather fire without glasses at the bench. But I don them anyway, enduring fogged and smudged lenses and the discomfort of ear hooks under my muffs. Metal particles, even gas from a blown primer or case rupture, can destroy your eye.

Do not fire someone else’s handloads. You can’t know if the in-law who assembled a box of 7mm Magnum cartridges knows the difference between IMR 4198 and IMR 4831, or why maximum charges for 150-grain bullets can be hellish behind 200s. Unless you want more quality time with your attorney, do not sell, trade or donate your handloads to anyone else. Those 7mm-08 cartridges that neatly dispatch deer become bombs when the unwitting thumb them into a .25-06.

Most importantly, think. Neither handloading nor chronographing require a high IQ. The logic of a plow horse will do. Lose your concentration, though, and you can imperil your shooting career.

Working press and powder measure demands focus. So, too, does chronographing, especially if you’re trying to shoot tight groups at the same time. Add rifles and loads, and you have that many more reasons to do the job alone. Onlookers drain your focus. Make a point of denying yourself the company of curious people who don’t know you can’t afford distraction.

Once, on the range with a fellow who’d just bought a lovely .270 from me, I heard an oddly harsh report. A quavering moan ensued. I raced over to find the rifle torn asunder, its French walnut stock split in three pieces, the extractor gone, the bolt frozen. My amigo was bleeding around his shooting glasses. Those handloads of yours … He winced as he wiped his brow. Convinced he was not seriously hurt, I examined the box of .270 ammo. I had charged those cartridges with H4831, a slow, bulky powder. It’s hard to get enough H4831 in a .270 case to blow up a 98 Mauser. Indeed, it’s downright impossible. I was sure I could have carded powder at the case mouths and seated 130-grain bullets without exceeding safe pressures. The box of suspect loads did wear my hand-written label. It dawned on me suddenly, however, that the box was also full. I mentioned this and asked where the delinquent cartridge had come from. Still dazed, my friend nodded toward another box. A glance told me it held .308 rounds—for the fellow’s other rifle. In haste he had grabbed that ammunition by mistake. In a .270 rifle, the .308 cartridge is poison. Its case is shorter, so the larger bullet doesn’t quite reach the chamber’s neck. The Mauser extractor holds the hull against the bolt face. Ignition is certain. But forcing a .308 bullet through a .277 bore hikes pressures to obscene levels. My partner was lucky the bolt held.

More recently, on the bench with a borrowed lever rifle and chatting with its owner, I turned back to the target, aimed, thumbed the hammer, and squeezed. Clack. I waited several seconds before opening the action—standard procedure to control the muzzle in the event of a hang-fire. When I dropped the lever, an empty case tumbled out. First thought: I must have forgotten to cycle. So I chambered another round and settled the rifle again on the bags.

Then an angel tapped me gently on the shoulder. I considered other possibilities. Flipping open the action, I looked into the muzzle. Dark. The first .348 Improved round I’d chambered had been sized and primed. But the handloader had neglected to include powder before seating the bullet. When I pulled the trigger, the primer fired, pushing the 200-grain softnose into the bore, where it lodged just ahead of the throat. The primer’s report couldn’t escape the case or the bore, and was further muffled by the heavy hammer fall. Had I fired a second round, the results would have been jarring. The lodged bullet would have interrupted the forward travel of the one behind just as gas pressure was peaking. This catastrophic event would most probably have shredded the rifle and my left hand—or caused even greater mayhem.

Assumptions can scuttle your shooting career. Thinking is always a good idea.

Enough cautions. Properly conducted, handloading is fun. And it’s a safe pursuit. I’ve endured no more pain at the bench than I have at the dinner table or watching television. Enthusiasts who seated their first bullets in caves littered with dinosaur bones have enjoyed long, rewarding lives, wearing out many sets of trim dies before other ills pulled them from the powder scale. I suspect you’ll find handloading as engaging, instructive and useful as they have.

This primer is seated sideways. Soak it in oil to de-activate before removing with a decapping pin!

TO ERR IS HUMAN

Handloading is a safe practice, provided you pay attention to what you’re doing. Multitasking is a bad idea. Avoid, too, handloading under the press of deadlines. Historically, stress has proven inimical to safe, accurate loads. A Navy report in the wake of our Civil War noted that of 25,476 muzzle-loading rifles found on battlefields, at least 24,000 were loaded. Half of these contained two loads each, one fourth from three to ten loads each…. In many of these guns, from two to six balls have been found with only one charge of powder. In some, the balls [were] at the bottom of the bore with the charge of powder on top…. Twenty-three loads were found in one Springfield.

And that was with just one ball, one cap, and one charge of powder to assemble at a time.

A SENSE OF WHAT WORKS

This book is not a manual—not a compendium of specific loads. Before you handload, you’d be smart to get several manuals. I’ve listed what I consider the best in this book, with contact information. Cross-referencing is a big help in developing loads. Stiff charges in one manual may be listed as mid-range in another. Powders used by one manufacturer may not appear in another’s manual, though they’re excellent propellants for the task. Check enough manuals, and you’ll get a feel for what should serve a cartridge well. While no substitute for data, that sense of what should work speeds up load development and helps you fashion useful starting loads for wildcat rounds not listed in manuals. It’s also a good first step to safe loads for rifles with short throats and other bore anomalies.

New propellants give traditional cartridges new life. Hodgdon offers Hornady’s powder to handloaders.

Chapter 1: Pioneers in Handloading

The middle of the twentieth century delivered some of the best big game hunting this country would ever see. It brought the best of Winchester’s bolt rifles and ranks of new, short belted magnum cartridges. Before the Ford Mustang, Jack Kennedy, Sputnik, and Elvis Presley, shooters found headline news in the start-up of companies promising more and better ammunition. Handloaders, especially, benefited from the efforts of pioneers like Joyce Hornady, Bruce Hodgdon, Fred Huntington, Roy Weatherby, and Dick and Vernon Speer. But their work built on the efforts of wildcatters in the early days of smokeless powder.

CHARLES NEWTON

Born in Delevan, New York, January 8, 1870, Charles Newton worked on his father’s farm until finishing school at age 16. After a two-year stint teaching, he applied his quick mind to the study of law and was admitted to the state bar. But his passion was not for courtrooms. He spent six years in the New York National Guard, then began developing cartridges with then-new smokeless propellants. Eventually, in association with Fred Adolph, he turned his hand to designing firearms.

A talented German gunsmith, Adolph immigrated to the United States in 1908 and established a shop in Genoa, New York. By 1914, he had published a catalog of rifles, shotguns, and combination guns. Some were imported; others he built. Adolph distinguished his business by chambering high-velocity big game cartridges, among them nearly a dozen by Charles Newton. The smallest but perhaps best known was the .22 High-Power. A 1905 development on the .25-35 case, it pushed 70-grain .228 bullets at 2,800 fps. The Imp built a bigger-than-life reputation on animals as formidable as tigers. More realistically, it proved a deadly deer cartridge. And it inspired shooters to think of reaching beyond range limits imposed by blunt bullets and iron sights.

Many handloading pioneers chased higher velocities with small-bore rifles, for game like coyotes.

In 1912, the talented Newton necked the .30-06 to .257 and called it the .25 Newton Special. His 7mm Special foreshadowed the .280 Remington by half a century (as did the 7x64 Brenneke developed in Germany about the same time). Also in 1912, Newton delivered to Savage a short, rimless .250 cartridge that followed the .22 High-Power as a new chambering for the 1899 lever rifle. Newton suggested a 100-grain bullet, but Savage hawked instead an 87-grain missile at 3,000 fps—lightning speed in those days. The .250-3000 moniker derives from that initial load. Newton’s work with short cases helped bring the .300 Savage to market. Its hull measured 1.87 inches but packaged 10 percent more power than a .30-30.

In 1912, Newton developed the .250 Savage (left), here with the .257 Roberts (1934), .25-06 (1969).

Newton came up with a .22 Long Range pistol cartridge by shortening and necking down the .28-30 Stevens. The bullet was the same .228 jacketed spitzer loaded in the .22 High-Power. He fashioned his .22 Newton from the 7x57 hull, driving a 90-grain bullet at 3,100 fps from a barrel with fast 1-in-8 twist. The .22 Special on .30-40 Krag brass launched a 68-grain bullet at nearly 3,300.

A single-shot enthusiast, Charles Newton experimented with big-rimmed cases like Winchester’s .405, necking it to 7mm, even .25. He designed .30, 8mm and .35 Express rounds from 3 ¼ -inch Sharps hulls. His rimless .30 Newton had the profile of modern belted magnums and approached them across the chronograph. It delivered more punch than hunters considered necessary for North American game then. Inspired by the .404 Jeffery hull, Newton’s .35 and a handful of other big rimless and rebated cartridges appeared around 1910. One of his most celebrated efforts was the .256 Newton. Ballistically similar to the .257 Roberts Improved, it fired a .264 bullet, not a .257. Charles preferred it to the .25-06 for two reasons. First, .25-06 chambers of that time varied in dimensions, and as tight chambers hiked pressures; Newton didn’t want his name linked to rifles that fell apart. Secondly, Mauser produced 6.5mm barrels.

Early in his cartridge-designing days, Newton had dreamed of building his own rifles. In 1914, he formed the Newton Arms Company in Buffalo, New York. With a factory under construction, he traveled to Germany to seek a supply of rifle actions from Mauser and J.P. Sauer & Sohn. He intended to restock them, then barrel them to .256 Newton and .30 Adolph Express. A flier advertised .256 Newton barrels of the best Krupp steel with raised, matted ribs and sight slots—for $17! In March 1915, the first Newton rifles appeared in a catalog. The 1898 Mauser actions wore barrels in .256, .30 and .35 Newton. Hunting-style stocks by Fred Adolph and California gunsmith Ludwig Wundhammer gave them a sporting look. Available in three grades, they were priced from $42.50 to $80.

Alas, Newton’s timing could hardly have been worse! The first two dozen Mauser rifles were to arrive 15 August 1914. Germany went to war the fourteenth. With international conflict nixing his promised Mauser rifles, Charles Newton tapped the Marlin Firearms Company for barrels in .256 Newton, threaded for 1903 Springfields. He planned to sell them for $12.50 as replacements to hunters pining for something other than a .30-06. He would fit them with Springfield sporter stocks. But rifles and components were in short supply. All arms factories were up to their eyeballs in lucrative government contracts.

Charles Newton had to sit on his hands, but he didn’t stop thinking. By 1916, he had incorporated desirable features of the Mauser and Springfield designs into a rifle whose only non-original part was the mainspring. He hired lengendary barrel-maker Harry Pope to oversee barrel production and claimed that Pope had helped him develop segmented rifling in Newton barrels.

The first of Newton’s new rifles went on sale January 1, 1917. They got favorable press. But once again the timing was wrong. The United States entered the war April 6, the government assuming control of all ammunition production. Though Newton loaded his own cartridges, he depended on Remington for cases. Early in 1918, ammo was coming off the line. But the banks supporting his firm sent it into receivership, and by year’s end, the Newton Arms Company was no more. About 2,400 rifles had been built. Another 1,600 were completed by Bert Holmes, who acquired all assets. Holmes sold more than 1,000 rifles for $5 each before giving up trying to run the plant himself.

In April 1919, New York machinery dealers Lamberg, Schwartz and Land formed the Newton Arms Corporation. Their plan was to market as genuine Newtons several bin-loads of poor-quality rifles they had bought from Bert Holmes. Charles Newton filed suit and won a delayed settlement. Marshaling assets, he then launched the Chas. Newton Rifle Corporation (April 19, 1919). Evidently the plan was to equip a new factory with surplus tooling from Eddystone Arsenal.

Nothing came of the Eddystone deal. The only rifles sold by the Chas. Newton Rifle Corporation were commercial Mausers. They had butterknife bolt handles, double-set triggers, triple-leaf sights. Some featured parabolic rifling, some a cloverleaf of muzzle grooves—ostensibly to vent gas in such a way as to prevent bullet tipping. Riflemen liked these actions and Newton’s stocks. He got roughly 1,000 orders. But Germany’s overheated postwar economy couldn’t supply that many rifles under the contract terms. Only 100 or so arrived Stateside. Ever optimistic, Charles Newton started another venture in 1923, with Arthur Dayton and Dayton Evans, who had helped him bankroll his 1919 venture. The Buffalo Newton Rifle Corporation, founded in Buffalo, soon moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where the first Buffalo Newton rifles shipped in 1924. They had interrupted-thread lock-up and four-groove nickel-steel barrels chambered to .30-06 and four Newton rounds: .256, .280, .30, and .35. Walnut stocks featured a crossbolt behind the magazine, but no receiver lug to arrest recoil! Many stocks split. Western Cartridge Company, which had begun supplying Newton rounds in 1921, listed Buffalo Newton ammunition.

Once again money had become scarce for Charles Newton. After borrowing on his life insurance, he pleaded with Marlin’s Frank Kenna to build his rifles under contract. The astute, conservative Kenna demurred—despite Newton’s claim that his company was on the brink of success, and that, at the rate of 1,000 rifles a month, Marlin could build rifles for $8 each. Buffalo Newtons then retailed for $60.

In 1929, the Buffalo Newton Rifle Corporation folded, after producing around 1,500 rifles. With characteristic zeal, Charles Newton applied himself to another action design and came up with the New Newton Straight Pull Rifle. Its two-lug bolt and Springfield cocking piece suggested bolt-rifle ancestry; but Newton had also borrowed from the straight-pull Lee Navy and Winchester lever-action designs. In fact, Newton renamed the rifle the Leverbolt. If Marlin produced the rifle, implored Newton to Frank Kenna, he’d split profits down the middle. When Kenna required proof of demand, Newton published a flyer soliciting a $25 down payment for each Leverbolt rifle. The remaining $35 would be due when the rifle was delivered. Sadly, even this offer failed to bring the necessary 500 orders.

Charles Newton was an able wildcatter and rifle designer—and, alas,